U.S. Senator John McCain, a top member of President George W. Bush's Republican Party, urged the world on Saturday to impose economic and other sanctions on Iran, bypassing the United Nations if needed. Welcoming the vote by the UN nuclear watchdog on Saturday to report Iran to the Security Council, McCain repeated that military action against Tehran must remain an option if it did not bow to international demands to halt its nuclear activities."Immediate UN Security Council action is required to impose multilateral sanctions, including a prohibition on investment, a travel ban, and asset freezes for government leaders and nuclear scientists," McCain told a security conference in Munich."Should Russia and China decline to join our peaceful efforts to resolve the nuclear issue, we should seek willing partners to impose these sanctions outside the UN framework."... http://news.yahoo.com

Militants attacked government offices and a police convoy Saturday, continuing a series of assaults that has left at least 41 people dead in the region over two days, government officials said. About 250 Afghan forces fought more than 200 rebels in the area's fiercest fighting in months. At least 19 people were killed on in Afghanistan and Pakistan Saturday. Afghan officials said U.S. forces joined the battle Friday and Saturday but a U.S. military spokesman said he could only confirm involvement in the first day of fighting. The violence spread across the border as a roadside bomb exploded by an army vehicle Saturday in Pakistan in a northwestern tribal region near Afghanistan, killing three security personnel, an official said. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1579969

Two fighter jets forced a small plane to land after the pilot flew too close to President Bush’s ranch in central Texas while he was spending the weekend there.The Secret Service on Saturday confirmed that the pilot violated restricted air space over the ranch on Friday night, several hours after the president arrived, and was forced to land at nearby Waco Regional Airport....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11173821/from/RSS/

Survivors of the Red Sea ferry disaster said on Saturday the Egyptian captain had fled his burning ship by lifeboat and abandoned them to their fate, as hopes faded of finding some 800 missing people.Some passengers, plucked alive from the sea or from boats after the ferry caught fire and sank early on Friday, said crew members had told them not to worry about the blaze below deck and even ordered them to take off lifejackets.An official at el-Salam Maritime Transport Company, which owned the Al Salam 98, said the captain, named as Sayyed Omar, was still unaccounted for. The company will issue a written statement on the disaster later on Saturday, he added.Rescue workers have recovered 195 bodies from the Red Sea and saved 400 people, but about 800 more, most of them Egyptian workers returning from Saudi Arabia, are missing....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11157659/from/RSS/

An intense debate erupted during the Ford administration over the president's powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence, according to government documents. George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are cited in the documents. The roughly 200 pages of historic records obtained by The Associated Press reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President Bush's acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations. "Yogi Berra was right: It's deja vu all over again," said Tom Blanton, executive director for the National Security Archive, a nongovernment research group at George Washington University. "It's the same debate." ...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/04/politics/main1281380.shtml?CMP=OTC-RSSFeed&source=RSS&attr=U.S._1281380

The Bush administration has said it is planning to spend $120bn on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars this year, bringing their total cost so far to $440bn.The spending request, which will soon be presented to Congress, marks a 20% increase over last year, despite plans to draw down US troop levels in both war zones in the coming months. The administration also plans to ask for a downpayment of $50bn on war costs next year. The requests are expected to pass easily. The spending on the Iraq conflict alone is now approaching the cost of the Korean war, about $330bn in today's dollars. Meanwhile the cost of the overall "war on terror" - relabelled The Long War in the Pentagon - is already close to half a trillion dollars, and will soon equal that of the 13-year Vietnam war."There is some reason to be surprised that it's this much," said Steven Kosiak, a military spending analyst at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. "The Congressional Budget Office had...http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1702037,00.html